As we are having a bit of an influx ATM I thought I would start a thread to mention all those little things that make life easier...

Red icons like this or mean there it's either a new thread or a has new posts in it since you last were in it. Blue versions mean you have already read all current posts in the thread. The animated version just means that it's a "hot topic", and TBH I've yet to work out why the board determines one topic is "hot" and another isn't.

Clicking little red icon "" will take you straight to the newest unread message in it. Very useful for fast moving threads like chatterbox. At the top right of the page you should also see a link "First unread post" (if there are unread posts in a thread) which will also take you to the first unread post in the thread.

This icon: means a topic has been moved to another section of the forum.

You won't be able to use private messages until after your first 5-10 posts. This is a security thing setting. MODS and ADMIN cannot see private messages unless they have been reported to us using the report button.

At the top right of every post you make (next to the report triangle) you can see an edit button. If you make a mistake you can always change it. However a Mod can lock a post if necessary.

The report triangle doesn't hide a post as it does on the BBC, it just flags it for the Mods attention.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

I have been on here for ages and still cant make sense of how the topics are arranged. Can you explain why I go into "the Kitchen" there is a list of topics and at the top of the same page, a sub list of headings for topics. I am finding it difficult to navigate around to find the interesting topics for me.

irishcountry-cousin wrote:What is the logic to it, I just can't get my head around it?

Well, the fundamental division is between cooking and general chat. Right? That's kitchen vs Coffee Shop.

So if you click on "kitchen" you get to the kitchen main menu as you say. Well, wthin the kitchen the first list of headings are daughter boards, each with its own topic, and with their headings showing the purpose of the board. So if you read under the first set of headings, you'll see that "The Bakers OvenThis is the place where the bakers hang out. Cakes and breads abound. "

So while this is still about cooking, it's a bit more specialised dealing with everything to do with baking. The idea is to make it easier for someone who - for example - is looking for a bread recipe just to look through that section.

Then next you have"The LarderA preservers paradise. Jams and chutneys everywhere. " I'd have thought that would be pretty self explanatory. When you want to post your favourite chutney or pickle recipe, or find how I make Marmalade, that's the place to go

After that is"The Veggie PlaceFor those time when the Vegetarians and Vegans want to get away from the more carnivorous types. "

Although theoretically you won't find many meat recipes or discussions here, it can happen that those of us who use a link to "unread messages" to see a message which was posted there, and answer without noticing that the message was originally in this area which is for vegetarian and vegan recipes and discussions. It's a good place to go for finding suggestions for those meat free days you feel like enjoying.

And then there's "The Kitchen GardenOut by the shed, near the chicken coop. The place everyone hangs out to discuss the various edibles they raise in their gardens/allotments. "Again, that really should be pretty clear. It's about growing foodstuff. Not about inedible flowers, or pretty trees. but about what variety of swede grows best in Somerset, or whether silver beet is the same as Sea kale and how they are grown.

Finally there's "The CellarDown below the coffee shop is the cellar. Perfect for keeping the home made tipples a bit stronger than coffee or tea Moderator: cheshire-cheese "It's where you would go to look for discussions about alcoholic tipple. Might be how to brew, or where to find something, or some tasting notes. Whatever.

In all these, subdivisions, I think it's reasonably clear that the subjects may be less likely to be of general interest. Which isn't to say you shouldn't or wouldn't be. It's just to keep things tidy.

And then anything else, which doesn't really fit into any of these specialised headings would go into the more general section, and you'll see the topics listed, just as they are in each of the specialised sections.

I hope that's clarified the way the board is organised. I suppose I'm so used to it that I don't find the slightest trouble in understanding it. But if I've not explained it properly, do please come back and explain what you find hard to get your head round.

Last edited by ianinfrance on May 13th, 2012, 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

I tend not to go in via the various headings - I usually check out the 'view my posts' first, then when I've caught up with them I look at the 'unread posts' and 'new posts' and see if anything looks interesting ... of course doing it that way means that I rely on the thread titles being fairly informative, but sometimes I find something really interesting but I might not have looked at it if I'd known from the start what it was about - if you get my drift

And then anything else, which doesn't really fit into any of these specialised headings would go into the more general section, and you'll see the topics listed, just as they are in each of the specialised sections.

That explains it a bit. But with all those specialised headings, how come there are so many topics that don't fit into any heading at all. Maybe Suffolk's method is the way forward!

Specials are Booze, baking, growing, veggie and preserves. That leave all meat cooking, most desserts, almost all non veggie soups, ditto starters. Fish dishes and so on,

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

suffolk wrote:I tend not to go in via the various headings - I usually check out the 'view my posts' first, then when I've caught up with them I look at the 'unread posts' and 'new posts' and see if anything looks interesting ... of course doing it that way means that I rely on the thread titles being fairly informative, but sometimes I find something really interesting but I might not have looked at it if I'd known from the start what it was about - if you get my drift

This is what I do, quick and easy.

Don't stop doing things because you are growing old; you only grow old if you stop doing things.

Mine is even shorter. Main index - view unread messages. any replies to mine show up there anyway.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

I should have read this thread when I first joined. i'll have a go go at uploading a photo, but you don't get more useless than me with this technology.

Do I have to type out a recipe on a post, or is there a way of cutting and pasting a Word file? Sorry if someone has already addressed this; I have a vague memory of someone talking of cutting and pasting.

It's called a "context" button, so what it does depends upon what program you're using at the time, and where you are in the program. For example, if you're in a Word document, I don't know what right clicking does - because I don't use Word. However in Wordperfect, it's been set to activate my spellchecker - but that's configurable. In Firefox, which is the browser I use, right clicking on a word opens a menu, left clicking once puts the insertion point where the cursor is. Left clicking twice will highlight the word. Left clicking three times highlights the whole paragraph. If you then press the CTL button followed by C (then release) you will have copied your highlit text to the clipboard., If you then open another program, (or change to its window if it was already open) then pressing CTL V will put that copied text at the cursor position, if the program allows it.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

I'm extremely stubborn and pretty arrogant. So when, 25+ years ago, I was walking round Selfridges and saw 9 year olds tapping away that the store's BBC A computers and making them do all sorts of useless things I made up my mind that I wasn't going to be beaten by a 9 year old. Then one or two other coincidences happened and I found myself learning to program on a Spectrum. I'm a great believer in trying things out, BUT only on copies of something relatively useless, and only ever after reading what the screen says. One reason Windows has made computers so much more accessible to the general public is because it really does try to protect the user from their worst idiocies, (to the extent that it drives one mad with its nannying sometimes), and so often it's pretty intuitive - once you have learnt how to read the whole of the screen.

Try creating a folder called "Phils_sillies" and copy a number of files of all kinds there. Then play with them!

Last edited by ianinfrance on March 12th, 2013, 8:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

Could someone remind me how to resize my picture for my avatar. For some reason, my avatar changed completely to a smiley face. I deleted that and now want to upload a picture of my own smiley face and I forgot how to resize! Btw, I am on a Mac, so no right click......

Open the avatar picture in the "Preview" application. Choose the "Tools" menu from the top bar. Then choose "change size" or something like that ( I'm on the iPhone at the moment and can't check the exact name. Then save it and use it.

As long as your version of Preview is reasonably new, you will have the option to change the size of a picture. Very early versions didn't have that function.

I failed miserably with the technology to upload a photo of myself. So i found a suitable chocolatey avatar. T'will do for now. I wonder why my old avatar changed for no reason to a smiley. It seemed to happen to one or two others too.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

Jtb wrote:I can't seem to load any avatar. Every picture I try to use is too big a file, and I have no idea how to shrink them

Some of the online image stores can resize down to Avatar size. For example Tinypic lets you upload an image and then resize it. That said, its default size is 100x75px and I'm afraid I don't remember what we require here - sorry,

Another possibility is to upload a full size image here, I'll resize it for you (takes me about 15 secs) and I can send it back here. You can the copy it and integrate it into your profile.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

Nothing agin surfers, silver or otherwise! But it's a shame when people haven't learnt some of the more basic operations. Do you remember on the Beeb board, how many people had to be helped to copy and paste.

That said, I do have photo retouching software and as I said to jtb, it takes me about 15 seconds to resize a photo. That said, tinypic works fine too.

--All the bestIanhttp://www.souvigne.comThe Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

I would like to know how to stay logged in to Wildfood. I always tick the box to log me in automatically but that does not work either. I keep the Wildfood page open on my browser but if my pc goes to sleep, or I go back to the page later, then I have been logged out. It is a bit annoying having continually to log in which I need to do to make my board/posting preferences work.